Echoes
by Cazio
Summary: Every hero breaks. Oneshot.


The door burst open, shooting beams of yellow light into the rainy darkness. He stepped out with defiance, as though he would never set foot there again. But he would, and in the back of his mind he knew it. The door slammed shut with a resounding whack that echoed slightly off of the brick walls that encased him. He remembered when skyscrapers were a rare occurrence on these streets, with the Empire State Building looming above like a beacon. Now, skyscrapers caged him, and the streets were throbbing with strange technology, all of it new to him and all of it overwhelming him.

The sidewalk was lacquered with dark pools of blackness that reflected the vibrant glow from the screens that seemed to be everywhere, spitting advertisements as though everyone was paying attention. A few people were walking on the street in front of him, huddled underneath umbrellas, a few looking down at their cell phones, another technology he only knew by name. The rain drove most of the people inside, giving the city the less suffocating aura it had once had, seventy years ago. That's what they kept telling him, like seventy years was something he could get used to, a number that would eventually mean nothing to him. But it wouldn't, there was no amount of time he could spend thinking about it to make it okay. He was completely alone now, there was no one he could go to for help, no familiar faces, no friends he could talk to. He was forced to trust these men of the future, solely because they hadn't tried to kill him. Yet. He had no idea if they would, if they were waiting for him to do something, or if they really just wanted to help him. Or maybe they had used him while he was asleep, taken his blood and used their gadgets to find the formula that made him the way he was.

The rain began to pick up and he found that he was drenched, his clothes glued to him and his blonde hair turned dark brown. He just kept walking, desperately searching for somewhere quiet, somewhere that could feel like a place he had been before. When they first brought him here, he had gone to Central Park, convinced he would find such a place. But the air was still thick, the paths were paved and worn and the saplings had grown into towering tree trunks. Nothing was the same here; he might as well have been put on another planet. Maybe he was on another planet, maybe it was all some illusion from the Tessaract and he was still frozen or dead or sleeping. But something told him it wasn't a dream or and alternate reality, that everything was too perfectly strange for it to be anything but the truth. He was lost on his very own Earth, the place he had once defended but was now defended by others whom he did not know.

As he approached a dark alley he tripped. For a split second he wanted to fall, he _waited_ to fall and catch himself, if only to remind him that he was still human, that he still had flaws. But his reflexes were faster than his mind and he was walking again before he even realized the fall was prevented. A car hummed down the street, sloshing the rainwater and sending a fine spray onto a stray cat that had wandered too close. It hissed loudly, skittering off into the darkness. He broke into a jog, then into a run, accelerating until he was sprinting down the sidewalk. He waited for his lungs to burn, for his muscles to quiver, but the feeling never came. He kept running. He ran until he came across a tiny patch of grass by the harbor. He slowed, already feeling his body regaining what little power he had lost. A cold wind floated from the water, beckoning him to come closer as the rain splattered on his face. He blinked, feeling the droplets dribble over his lips, the sensation of being completely saturated oddly comforting. He took a step forward toward the water's edge.

A bench became visible in the rainy haze, but it looked as though no one had sat in it for decades. The wood was rotted and it slumped on its side against a piece of scrap metal, so rusted it looked as though the slightest touch would turn it to dust. He sat. The bench buckled, but did not fall. He put his head in his hands, rubbing his face to rub away the world around him before it killed him.

"Damn it," he said, his voice quiet. The wind blew around him, shifting the rain and sending it upon him like needles. He inhaled, but it came as a gasp as though he was drowning in the rain that was beating down on him and that it might be his last breath he would ever take.

"Damn it," he said again. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling his shoulders tremble, but he didn't know if from sadness of chill. It wasn't his last breath, he knew his last breath would be spent for the men he was forced to trust, for a world he no longer knew and a population that forgot that he had existed. He would die drowning in his own blood, beaten and broken until his body was a mess of broken bones and broken hopes and broken missions he hadn't been able to complete. He wouldn't die sitting alone in the rain, trying to come to grips with his new reality. He would die fighting, only because killing and fighting were all he knew that he could do that would be acceptable. But he would not die a hero because a hero does not sit in the rain on a bench by a harbor in a city he doesn't know anymore. The rain slowed to a soft patter, leaving him in silence to think about the things he had done, the things he was yet to do, and the things he would be asked to do that he would find himself incapable of doing.

* * *

_yup, guess who saw avengers this weekend? fantastic movie, and captain america is by far my favorite character but i couldn't help but feel like he'd broken down sometime between the end of Captain America and when they called him in the Avengers. ALL THE FEELINGS._


End file.
